Lest We Forget
by The Spectrum Sings
Summary: "What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story." - F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sam/Lucifer.


**Lest We Forget**

"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."- F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sam/Lucifer.

* * *

Sam could fill a book with the things he's ashamed of, with pages and pages of wobbly scribbles whispering of his most broken moments. How can someone live a life so full of things you want, no, _need_ to forget? But then, he's a Winchester—the kid with demon blood, who did time with the devil, who started the apocalypse along with his brother. He forgets he saved the world, too. He forgets he saved so many. He forgets, because he also didn't save some. He didn't save some of the most beautiful, amazing people. And the world is a darker place because of it.

Jess: It stands out so harshly. It's just a name but it can drag Sam to his knees with regret and guilt and self-hatred. Sam believed that he and Jess would be infinite, boundless. An endless love. How could they not be? She was everything and he could have saved her, he should have done something, should have known… But how could he? Except he did and he ignored it. The shame Sam feels at letting Jess die fills more than a few pages. The visions are something Sam likes to pretend didn't happen. It hurts too much. It's a throbbing ache right over his heart. Some days, it's agonising, pounding, laughing, and others it dwindles to a meek, tender, almost kind, pulse of "you can't save everyone." Like it's trying to tell Sam he's forgiven.

Once your hearts been broken, it grows back bigger, stronger, but scarred. And the threat of someone leaving once again overshadows Sam's hope for eternity. There is no everlasting love. Every girl, every smile that makes his heart beat faster only destroys him, adds a page to the book, breaks his heart. But perhaps the anticipation of this pain is worse than the actual agony itself. Sam is left, disconcerted by the uncertainty of it all, waiting.

Then there is the demon blood: warm and murky, opaque and sinister, corrupt and ruinous. Pages and pages of shame. Of regret. Of apologises too late. It burns his soul at 2am. He deserves it. Or, he thinks he does. He burns until he is raw, he blisters and bleeds.

Then there is Lucifer. He gets his own chapter. Sometimes Sam thinks that whole incident should get its own book, but revisiting those memories is something painful for more reasons that he wants to name and admit to. The dreams of the cage still beckon sometimes, and Sam screws his eyes shut tightly and digs his fingers into his palm until they're slick with blood. Eventually, they stop beckoning and just ungracefully yank him over the edge. Sam doesn't scream, and mentally adds another point to his regrets: letting the dreams win. He does get a small green tick though, one thing he does right—he stays silent and so Dean sleeps through, night after night.

There is this creature that lies heavy in the soul of Sam—a wicked thing with an insatiable appetite, for blood and love and fury, for power. Sam really needs none of these things, save love, but we all need love. Sam is gentle and caring, sharing a quality with Castiel that seems to end up as a negative: too much heart. But the creature… It is brought alive by the demon blood, given life by Lucifer in the long hours spent lingering in shadows of the cage. It entangles itself with the nerves in Sam's finger tips and bathes in the blood of demons. It nibbles at the marrow in his bones and draws deep screams from within.

And Lucifer watches curiously as his vessel manages whispered cries through his bloody throat. Cage dreams aren't in a tense—they are past, present and future, they are all Sam has for that long, drifting moment, trapped in something that could be a memory, could be a lie, could be real. It's too late to tell.

But there is something else about Lucifer that fills the pages. Something Sam is ashamed of and yet desires for eagerly, impatiently, keenly. So many times Lucifer has to whisper that to want something is not the same as addiction before Sam gives in and lets his scarred heart feel what it's been demanding Sam takes.

Sam's dreams aren't all nightmares. They're stolen kisses and sweaty palms and weak murmurs of love in the darkest of places. Sam hates that he has found everlasting love with this creature. But, God, he loves him too, so much it bleeds through the pages.

The cage is a blur—hours, days, weeks, months. The grasp of his soul, the screams that aren't human, aren't his, and somehow come from him. The secure press of Lucifer's hand in his hair, tangled and seizing, holding him steady, reminding Sam that he's here, and that he's alive, even if only in this endless state of anguish. Sometimes, when Sam is unconscious, Lucifer strokes Sam's too long hair and catches out the tangles, cleaning the sweat from his forehead and wishing away the nightmares, just for a few hours. The first time Sam is accidentally awake when this happens, he cries for hours. He snivels and weeps and laughs a little bit, because it feels like years since someone gave him a friendly touch. Maybe it has been.

Lucifer stubbornly won't touch him again for a week. He breaks eventually. He can't bare Sam's tortured yells, especially when he's not the one causing them. Although, one day, that thought will haunt Lucifer. But after that, Lucifer doesn't wait until Sam is asleep to start lazily caressing his hair. He holds him and Sam clings to him, because Lucifer is all he has now, and Lucifer sooths the flames and keeps him safe, and Sam doesn't want to think about why.

Lucifer, on the other hand, couldn't fill a book with his shame. It still makes a good story, but Lucifer is not easily clawed by shame or guilt or regret. There are two things that he dwells on early in the morning, late at night, in the everlasting cold that is the cage: killing Gabriel, and hurting Sammy.

Because he never really wanted to do either, but the cause had to come first. That's something Lucifer doesn't regret—rebelling. He could not be ashamed for following his own path, for free will, for loving his Father more than he could ever bear to love the humans. Humans are flawed and broken and do terrible things, but they do beautiful things too, and they keep trying, and Lucifer sometimes wishes he had listened to Gabriel.

Sometimes, at midnight, he talks to Gabriel and oh how the devil cries when his little brother doesn't whisper back. He can never change what happened with Gabriel, but maybe he can save Sam. But maybe he's too late. And that's it, that's Lucifer's book.

Lucifer is ashamed of letting Sam become one of those broken humans he was hated so much. He is ashamed of not fixing him, cleaning him, letting his soul shine again. He's ashamed of learning to think of little Sammy as perfect anyway. He's ashamed of how he screamed and raged when his glittering, pulsing soul was ripped away from him. He's ashamed of thinking that only the things you no longer have, and will never truly have, can be perfect.

The night before Sam's soul is saved from the cage, Lucifer stitches his own heart between the cracks. He knows something is coming, knows he can't stop it, and doesn't want his heart to be homesick when Sammy leaves.

The scent of Sam lingers, and Lucifer laughs humourlessly as he thinks _you are my greatest sin. _

Home is not heaven. Home is Sam, and Lucifer will never get to see his home again.

Come on, come back, come home.

Lucifer is the most ruined of them all.


End file.
